OK, some people are not going to like this post. That said, let me dive in. I saw the other day that a local church has a website that “rats” on business that dare to say Happy Holidays and not “Merry Christmas”. The whole idea is to encourage Christians to boycott business and complain about governments who dare to be on their naughty list.
Frankly, I think this is sad. It portrays Christians to the world as nit picky people who make non issues big issues. Frankly, we don’t need any more bad press. The same church has taken funds away from the local homeless shelter it started under another group of leaders because it just can’t afford it anymore. I guess the website was costing them too much. “To bad baby Jesus, we don’t have a warm room for you because we are trying to make sure everyone warms you with birthday greetings, doesn’t that feel good?”
I remember a few years ago that people were all up in arms because some people dared to call it X-mas instead of Christmas. Did we realize that the X is an ancient church symbol for Christ? So called Christian Governments didn’t like Christmas Holidays for some stupid reason. Believers would say and write x-mas in times of persecution because they wanted to celebrate without being persecuted. Of course we don’t waist time trying to understand and instead of knowing our own history we just ignorantly attack those who would dare to challenge us.
Now before anyone starts to reply let me say something about our current situation, to me you can’t call it a Holiday tree any more than you can call it a Holiday Menorah or a Holiday Kwanza Candle. All those events including my own have their own definitive celebrations, styles and traditions. It is just that in the public sector I don’t care if a business which operates in that sector says “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”. Frankly I am more concerned with whether or not my Co-Co is hot or cold. Business leaders live in our DFW pluralistic society and have to act accordingly. Most are not trying to herd the Christians back to the Coliseum lions but are just trying to take care of all of their multicultural customers and not a select group of Christian legalistic Pharisees. Is it the spirit of Christ that leads us to demand special recognition or is it the spirit of self? In such a searching society can we present a better witness?
I think we can. We can act Christ-like to them. You know imitate the birthday boy who became a man and told us to let our light shine (Matthew 5). I don’t remember the early church having a government local or national that bent to their needs. That early church had great power because they made the main issue the evangelization and discipleship of their local and national world. They were interested in the Kingdom of God. We should follow their example. To do that we must rely on what we do conforming to what we say we believe. Maybe if we stopped worrying about greetings, buildings, and our kingdoms and returned to the expansion of God’s kingdom we would see the world demand to say “Merry Christmas” based on our testimony and not our cries of indignation. So guys shut down the website and give the money to the homeless. It’s a better way to celebrate that homeless family in the manger.
